Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Evolution of cooperation


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   keep. (non-admin closure) — ΛΧΣ  21  06:39, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Evolution of cooperation

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1) The entire article is written like a blog post or a column. The style is very informal is inappropriate an encyclopedia article.

2) The article is unorganized and lacks most if not all of the features seen in other Wikipedia articles about books.

3) The article is much too long and most of the content has nothing to do with the book itself.

4) The article is written almost entirely by one Wikipedia member, J. Johnson and contains original research/commentary.

5) The book is not notable enough to deserve its own article.

Minor stylistic copyediting will not suffice to save this article; the entire article should be deleted and, if deemed necessary, rewritten from scratch. Trialeditor (talk) 16:38, 11 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Keep Notable book in the history of the theory of evolution. The article is not very well structured and essay-like, but it has the basic info and it seems to convey the gist of Axelrod's ideas and results. (I must admit that I recently read about Axelrod's experiments in a book by Dawkins, so they're fresh in my mind and it's hard to assess whether I'd grasped them from the article alone.) Q VVERTYVS (hm?) 16:54, 11 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions.  czar   &middot;   &middot;  17:14, 11 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Philosophy-related deletion discussions.  czar   &middot;   &middot;  17:14, 11 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Strong keep. The WP article is poorly written and needs fixing. But, the [Axelrod & Hamilton (1981) paper] is absolutely an influential work, with 22,000+ GScholar citations. The book is also influential, though some citations get buried in the count for the article due to the same title. So is follow-up work by Axelrod such as [The further evolution of cooperation] (in Science, 681 citations since 1988), [Evolution of cooperation without reciprocity] (in Nature, 444 citations since 2001), etc. The WP article read like OR in part but is a starting point.Truth or consequences-2 (talk) 17:27, 11 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Comment. Nomination came from user Trialeditor, which has since been deleted. Weird way to try WP, really. This would make it Snow keep in my book.
 * Comment this article should be on the general concept of evolution of cooperation. If there is to be one of the book The Evolution of Cooperation (book) would be the appropriate place. If there is to be one of the Robert Axelrod and W.D. Hamilton, The Evolution of Cooperation (paper) would be the appropriate place. Barney the barney barney (talk) 18:12, 11 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Keep The nominator's user page hasn't been deleted; I suppose he just hasn't created one. Anyway, the arguments for deletion are either false or not in accordance with our editing policies of WP:IMPERFECT and WP:PRESERVE.  AFD is not cleanup. Warden (talk) 19:10, 11 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Comment. This article certainly is not perfect (it was one of the first articles I undertook to write) and certainly can be improved. But User:Trialeditor does not suggest making improvements, s/he just goes straight for deletion, and on that basis alone could be deemed out of order. I respond to his specific points as follows.


 * 1) Editors vary on the degree of formality deemed appropriate. This article is less formal than other articles, but not fatally so.


 * 2) What other "book features" does Trialeditor find lacking?


 * 3) I am not aware that there are any arbitrary limits on length; I dispute that any (let alone "much") "of the content has nothing to do with the book itself." And I point out that the article is about more than the book, there not being a separate article on the topic.


 * 4) If Trialeditor feels that some material is OR s/he should tag such material. As to single authorship: so are many articles; there is no rule that only committees may write articles.


 * 5) The claim of lack of notability is absurd, as well-documented by Truth or consequences-2, and in the article itself.


 *  Strong keep, the argument for deletion lacking merit. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 19:46, 11 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Keep seminal work on cooperation, referenced in plenty of other notable books like The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature, both of which books I am privileged to have in my personal library. Jclemens (talk) 04:19, 12 May 2013 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.